Paul Lavers and Joe MacDonald are co-founders of SportsDirect Inc., an online sports content provider that has grown to about 120 employees.

Q: What's the real scoop behind that story of you guys getting your start in a Spryfield basement?

A: JM: We've pretty much known each other since we were kids, about three years old, and for years we've always been huge sports fans, always into stats and that sort of thing. And when we got to university, we were both sort of bouncing around through university and Paul came up with the idea.

PL: Well, we were both fascinated by the Internet. Joe was at TUNS at the time taking engineering and I was taking business at SMU. He had a prof that got him into the Internet and I had a prof that got me into the Internet. It just sort of piqued our interest and we were always sort of failing entrepreneurs up until that point.

JM: Always looking for new ideas. What were some of the ones again?

PL: We tried to start a diaper service, back when we thought diaper services were going to be the next thing. Selling books at the flea market. We had a paving company ...

JM: We were really good at failing at that stuff.

PL: We just saw that the Internet had to take off. It was just such an easy way to send information to people and at the time, we were trying to get a lot of sports information from Atlantic News. USA Today was the only spot you could find U.S. information and that didn't come out until 3 p.m. The rudimentary Internet was Gopher, where you could actually go into the San Francisco Gate and get live scores and live information from a San Francisco newspaper without paying for it or waiting for it or anything. It was just mind-boggling.

JM: So we thought, "What if there was a spot where you could combine all the stats in one thing?" So we said, "Well, no one else is doing it. We might as well."

PL: Spent five years in a basement in Spryfield. Actually, we spent a year in a basement in Spryfield, a year in an office in Spryfield and another year in another basement ...

JM: We moved 12 times in 10 years...

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